The Internet and other digital communications networks continue to have significant effects on every aspect of personal and professional life. Network communications are becoming increasingly ubiquitous due to the reduced cost and increased capability of portable computing devices, the increasing prevalence and capability of mobile telephony and other wireless communications technologies, and other factors. As a result, consumers are increasingly expecting access to data, entertainment and other media without regard to the physical or geographic proximity of such content.
As an example, consumers have expressed significant interest in “place shifting” devices that allow remote viewing of television or other media content at locations other than the viewer's primary television set. Place shifting devices typically packetize media content that can be transmitted over a local or wide area network to a portable computer, mobile phone, personal digital assistant, remote television or other remote device capable of playing back the packetized media stream for the viewer. Placeshifting therefore allows consumers to view their media content from remote locations such as other rooms, hotels, offices, and/or any other locations where portable media player devices can gain access to a wireless or other communications network. Other media and other data-intensive applications are similarly enjoying widespread consumer interest.
While modern computing and network technologies allow increased mobility and improved access to desired content, a tradeoff often exists between access and security. Although firewalls and other structures can effectively preserve network security, these same structures can have the undesired effect of preventing access to desired services. To use placeshifting as an example, it may be very challenging to establish a connection between a placeshifting device and a media player if a firewall or other security structure resides between the two entities that wish to communicate. In addition to preventing undesired access to the secure network, then, a firewall may prevent legitimate and desired access to placeshifting or other services, particularly if the firewall is incorrectly or incompletely configured by the user.
Challenges can frequently arise in effectively establishing connections between clients and servers for placeshifting, media streaming and/or other applications. It is therefore desirable to create systems and methods for reliably and conveniently establishing connections between clients and servers across a network. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.